10 Beautiful Rooms

A week of 10 Beautiful Rooms dedicated to real spaces this week. It’s always lovely to see styled shots, and they are often very beautiful indeed for that is their purpose, but they don’t always have to deal with the reality of life and the awkward shapes that we all have and so can be difficult to recreate in our own homes.

This, by the way, is one of the key issues with Pinterest I find. It lures you in with promise of gorgeous spaces that can inspire your own homes but fails to point out that your own room has none of the attributes that make that one so great. It’s like buying a dress that you’ve seen on a model and expecting it to look the same on you.

And I can personally attest to that. I have bought several pieces of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s underwear from M&S and I don’t look the least bit like her when I put them on. I can’t understand it, she’s a 30-year-old supermodel who just had a baby and I’m a 50-year-old mother of teenagers – what’s not working here? That, people, is the difference between the interiors magazines and real life. And I’ve been in those too as those of you who dropped in last week will have read.

So there then is the house of interior designer Melanie Lissack. After working in the music industry for many years, when she and her husband bought their house, she realised she didn’t have the money to create the look she wanted. So she learned to DIY (or DIHerself) and blogged the process. That led to clients and a business advising others.

I particularly love this bathroom which has a very Soho House vibe and check the candle in a sconce on the wall. That’s a very clever touch. One of the reason I’m so terrified of candles is that I’m afraid they will fall over. This way it’s fixed to the wall and, if it falls, it will land in the water. Clever. I might rethink the whole free-standing tub thing…

Next up is the kitchen of a friend of mine which recently made the cover of EKBB magazine. Now clearly this house has good bones with those fabulous original French doors but it was a huge job to take down the wall between the two rooms and bring the level up so that it created one large open plan space.

I have featured this room on my instagram but I’m never quite sure what the crossover is between the two and thought it would be good to show it on here as well. One of the features I particularly like is how the hexagonal floor tiles (Mandarin stone) bleed into the parquet floor. This both links and divides the space at the same time and is so much better than the classic hard dividing line.

Next up, another room from my instagram feed which is the kitchen of Annabel Bird, who runs the very lovely online shop Bleakhouse. Fabulous if you need original and beautiful stuff for the dog but also a source of beautiful homewares.

Anyway, this is her gorgeous kitchen. It’s very small and it’s by Devol and while I know that you know that small spaces can be amazing, often you don’t get to see them in magazines and so on because stylists often feel that bigger is better.

But this really is a gorgeous space and I will admit to being enormously flattered when Annabel said the open shelves were inspired by my own. The colour, because I’m sure you will ask, is Devol’s own navy blue and the handles and tap are brass.

Next we are returning to the Darlington home of Greg Penn, aka Man with a Hammer on instagram. I featured his gorgeous house – the downstairs of which was a dentist before he got his hands on it – and as an avid follower of his account, he has now worked wonders on several other rooms including this guest bathroom below.

Classic black and white with a vintage wooden cabinet and a large plant. Sometimes it’s just that simple. Or his dramatic hallway below with its fabulous black panelling, white painted floorboards and Persian runner for colour. Even the Mad Husband followed him the other day he was so taken with this house and all that Greg has done.

Finally a shot of the living room belonging to Mother Hub, a space where women can come together online to encourage, support and inspire one another. In addition to that Natasha wrote a blog post about her snug following an instagram post that received so many questions she decided to write about it and you can see more and read about it here.

The colour is Farrow & Ball Hague Blue, which is always gorgeous and I wanted to include a detail of the painted fireplace so you can see how fabulous it looks when it’s all painted in the same colour.

And there we have it. Ten beautiful real rooms all of which I love. What do you think?